3 Answers
3

If you know (parts of) the name of the application, you can open the Dash by clicking on the Ubuntu icon in the top-left corner (or by pressing the Super key), then type the name and choose the application from the Applications search result (if there's only one result, you can directly press Enter to start it, else you can use the Tab key to step through the results):

Method 2:

Open the Dash by clicking on the Ubuntu icon in the top-left corner (or by pressing the Super key):

Now click on the More Apps icon to open the Dash's application view, which is called Application Lens. You are presented with expandable lists of:

Frequently used applications

All installed applications

Suggested applications you can download/install

In the top-right corner you see a drop-down menu, that allows you to filter the applications by various types (very much like the menu in the classic GNOME session allowed you to find types of applications). From there you can browse your applications and choose the one you want to start:

The Media Apps and Internet Apps items in the Dash are shortcuts that will directly show you only multimedia or internet applications.

Method 3:

Click on the Applications launcher item to go to the Application Lens from method 2:

You can also right-click the item to see its quicklist, which will directly bring you to the application type view in the Application Lens:

Open a terminal window (CtrlAlt + T)
At the prompt, type the name of the application - in proper case (usually all lower case).
If you know how it starts, type a bit of it and hit the tab key a couple times and it will either complete it or go as far as it can until it reaches a fork where it can go several ways which it will show you. Type another character or two and hit tab again until you get your application. When it is complete, press enter and - voila - it will run.